Horns blared as I blasted through the red light. The V-8 in my old truck roared as I flogged it for all it was worth.

My baby girl. The son of a bitch was going after my baby girl.

I was only a half-mile from the hospital when I caught sight of the first flashing lights in my rearview mirror. It’d taken them longer than I expected, and it was absolutely adorable that they seemed to think I was going to pull over. By the time I turned right off West Grand Boulevard and onto the main drive at Henry Ford Hospital, that single patrol car had turned into at least half a dozen.

I ran my truck right up to the main valet parking stand, and the poor kid manning the valet desk went white as a sheet in the half a heartbeat before he threw himself to the side. My tires screeched as they came to a stop, and I threw the door open and jumped out without even putting my truck in park. The security guard by the main entrance reached for the gun on his hip and shouted for me to stop, but he quickly shut up and raised his hands as soon as my 1911 came up and trained directly on his forehead.

“Down on the ground!” I roared at the guard, who quickly complied, flopping face down on the pavement and begging me not to shoot. I didn’t stop to listen to his cries, instead sprinting past and into the hospital.

I’d been wracking my brain on the way over here, trying to remember the floor layout of the hospital. If things went the way I thought they would, I didn’t have time to stop and ask the front desk for directions. For that matter, I wasn’t even entirely sure that Lynn would have taken Cassie to Henry Ford in the first place, but something in my gut had been insistent that this was the correct hospital, and I’d followed that hunch without question—it’d served me well, so far.

Everything changed the instant I burst through the front door. The atrium just inside the main entrance suddenly twisted and warped in on itself, and a moment later I stood all by myself at one end of a long, sterile hallway. The walls were an off white color, and there wasn’t a single window, door, painting, or sign anywhere along its length. A single, featureless door stared back at me from the opposite end of the hallway, and the music that had been softly playing in the back of my mind since I left the bar began creeping up in volume.

A tingling sensation ran up my spine, and in that moment, I knew the specter was watching me again. I spun around, expecting to see the damned thing behind me, but all that I saw was a blank wall. I inhaled a deep breath, sure that what I found on the other side of the door at the end of the hall would be a truly awful sight, and I steeled myself for whatever awaited me.

I turned back toward the door and began walking toward it. My footsteps echoed like gunshots with each step, and my right hand clenched harder on the 1911 it held at my side. I strode purposefully down the hall, and with each step, my fear diminished while my anger rose. I was done with this shit. Done with being a meal for some unholy abomination. Done with having my emotions toyed with. Done with all of it. With my jaw set, I reached for the door and pushed it aside. I was going to end this.

Until I saw my little girl lying in that bed.

Cassie lay propped up in the hospital bed, her dirty blonde hair looking greasy and withered, spread out on the pillow. Her face was ashen, eyes scrunched closed as if in pain. A sea of monitors and medical equipment surrounded her, tubes and wires snaking this way and that, diving under the thin white sheet covering her little body.

The room was standard fair. Blackout curtains covered a large window in the far wall. A smattering of cabinets and counters were arrayed around the room, and an uncomfortable-looking armchair sat unoccupied in the far corner. No one else was present.

I rushed forward and dropped to my knees next to the bed. My gun clattered to the floor as I reached out and found my baby’s hand, squeezing it gently.

“Cassie, honey. It’s daddy,” I said, keeping my voice low so as not to startle her.

She stirred, moaning softly. Then her eyelids fluttered open, and she looked at me. Her green eyes struggled to focus, and I assumed she was on a pretty heavy cocktail of pain meds.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m here,” I said, reaching up to run the fingers of my left hand through her hair. My voice trembled, and I fought back the tears stinging the corners of my eyes. “You just rest now. I’ll be right here.”

“Daddy,” she said, and the pain in her little voice was agony to hear. “Daddy, it hurts.”

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I looked down at her midsection, where the sheet covered up the bandages I knew must be there. Lynn had told me they’d scheduled Cassie for surgery that morning. As I looked, a crimson stain began to spread across the sheet.

“Daddy, it hurts!”

“Somebody help!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. I pulled the sheet back, and a mass of blood-soaked bandages greeted me. So much blood, and it just kept coming, pouring out through the gauze and running like rivers down my little girl’s sides.

“Cassie!” I shouted. “Stay with me!”

“Daddy…” Her words were growing weaker, and the pallor of her face grew whiter.

“Somebody help!” I screamed, pressing my hands down on the wound in a desperate attempt to staunch the bleeding. Cassie screamed, and I looked up toward the door, hoping against hope to see a host of nurses and doctors barging through it at any moment.

A pair of blazing red eyes stared back at me from the doorway.

“You!” I roared. “You did this!”

The specter didn’t answer. Slowly, the rest of its ephemeral body began to form, and a wide mouth appeared beneath its eyes. A toothy grin spread across its face, and the specter closed its eyes and inhaled deeply, shuddering in pleasure at whatever it had taken in.

Cassie started convulsing, and I looked down at her. I didn’t take any action though. My thumb absently rubbed at the underside of my ring finger, and realization hit me: I couldn’t save her; I wasn’t meant to save her. I needed to save myself.

The hardest thing I have ever done in life is take my hands away from my child in her moment of greatest need. But I did it.

A moment later, my 1911 was back in my hand, and I turned to face my tormentor. The gun came up, and my finger squeezed the trigger. A thunderous boom filled my ears, and the door behind the specter splintered where the 230 grain slug had plowed into it. I fired again and again. Eight shots tore through the space occupied by the specter, and all eight passed right through it and into the door beyond.

When the slide locked back on an empty magazine, I roared and hurled the useless piece of steel through the air at my enemy. The shots hadn’t appeared to hurt it, and neither did the pistol, as it passed harmlessly through its hazy body. Where my shots had passed through, however, a light was now spilling out. It was dark and chaotic, reminding me of the backside of the coin, or the swirling vortex of the portal I’d been shoved into.

The specter’s grin faltered upon seeing me notice the light, and I knew at that moment that I had him.

Roaring, I threw myself at the entity. Unlike my bullets and gun, though, my charge met immediate resistance upon colliding with its form. The two of us went down, a tangle of limbs and whatever the hell the specter had for a body. It looked up at me, crimson eyes wide with surprise. A moment later, though, the surprise morphed into fear.

I cocked my arm back, then rammed my fist straight into the thing’s heart. My hand tingled like I’d touched a live wire as my fingers closed around something hard, then I ripped it free from the thing’s body.

It shrieked and flailed beneath me, but as soon as my hand came free of the specter’s body, pulsating black orb of chaotic energy clutched tightly inside, the red glow in my tormentor’s eyes faded. Its body lost its cohesion, and I sank to the floor. The thing’s dying scream faded along with its body, and the last I saw of the specter was its red eyes winking out of existence.

I kneeled there on the floor, panting from the exertion. The constant pressure on my mind from the world around me had evaporated with the specter, and I was once again able to think clearly about my situation. I looked at my hand and slowly unfurled my fingers, allowing the strange multi-faceted orb to rest gently in my palm. That strange dark light continued to spill out from it, but it didn’t seem harmful to me.

I looked over my shoulder at the hospital bed, but Cassie had vanished, too. Only the blood-stained sheets remained.

“What the fuck was that?” I said to myself.

My hands were shaking now, the massive adrenaline dump I’d been riding finally beginning to wane. I closed my hand around the, well, whatever the hell the thing was, and stood up. Then, I took one last look around the room to make certain I hadn’t been imagining Cassie disappearing along with the specter and I headed for the door. I had no idea what I was going to be walking into, but Bob’s words about there always being a way to win were front and center in my mind.

When the door swung open, the hallway I’d walked through to get here was still there, but now there was another door at the far end. This one had a standard, glowing Exit sign on the wall above it. I looked down at the specter’s heart, still pulsing gently in my hand, and then shoved it into my pants’ pocket. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but maybe now that I had it I could find someone in this nightmare that could do something with it–like get me the hell out of here.

I strode purposefully toward the exit. Upon reaching it, I smacked the panic bar with my left hand and pushed it open.

A chaotic swirl of black light awaited me on the other side. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to collect all the terrible memories I’d accumulated over the last month and leave them in this hellish place. It was a fool’s errand, I knew, but it at least helped me put them into perspective. This place wasn’t real. I didn’t know exactly what it was or how it worked, but I was completely certain that it wasn’t real. And that was enough… for now.

I stepped through the door, and the maelstrom welcomed me in.